The Biological Databases of South Australia Flora Survey Collection 

The Biological Databases of South Australia (BDBSA) is South Australia's flora and fauna database that stores and manages specimen and observation records. This metadata record is the Flora Survey component that contains 1,050,631 plant measurements collected from 224,572 sites, across 5565 plant species since 1976. The dataset contains important vegetation structural attributes, with parameters such as crown openness, crown depth and crown separation ratio, including observations on plant occurrence data and fire disturbance related parameters. The resulting database provides a comprehensive record of biodiversity across sites visited during a diverse range of biodiversity projects undertaken in South Australia and provides a basis for future monitoring or other relevant work such as species modelling. Only validated BDBSA data is made publicly available and all records of sensitive taxa have been masked from the dataset. Data is accessible from the TERN EcoPlots, which provides the ability to extract subsets of flora data across multiple data collections and bioregions. 

We at TERN acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians throughout Australia, New Zealand and all nations. We honour their profound connections to land, water, biodiversity and culture and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. 

BDBSA aims to substantially improve knowledge and management of the biodiversity of South Australia, as well as track the direction of long-term ecological change by: determining the distribution of plant and terrestrial vertebrate species; systematically surveying the range of major habitats via quadrat-based sampling; collecting opportunistic data by active searching away from established quadrats; assessing vegetation and fauna condition; establishing baseline data for future monitoring; producing structural and floristic vegetation maps. 

A range of standard assessment and sampling methods have been developed to describe the site based (quadrat) vegetation surveys, following the Biological Survey methodology. These are aimed to record the presence of plant species, the cover abundance of species present, the structural composition of the vegetation, the physical environment, condition of native vegetation and, the presence/absence of disturbances within a plot. A summary of the methodologies for each vegetation assessment component is available on the Biological Databases of South Australia – Controlled Vocabularies. Please see the links for detailed descriptions for the BDBSA Flora Survey Methods:

Fire Evidence Assessment Method

Plant Opportunistic Observations Method

Plant Specimen Method

Structural Formation Assessment Method

Vegetation Age Class Assessment Method

Vegetation Assemblage Assessment Method

Vegetation Canopy Cover Assessment Method

Vegetation Overstorey Measurement Method

Vegetation Species Assessment Method